Via Corby Kummer at the Atlantic, who says that after “House Republicans split food stamps off the main package, it’s time to revisit a devastating documentary about hunger in America“:
… The idea of the split makes intuitive sense. Anyone who looks at the farm bill for a few minutes–or, like Dan Imhoff, devotes a book to it, or, like Marion Nestle, an entire semester’s course to it–sees what a chimera or, more to the point, a monster it is. It has next to nothing to do with the farms most people think of–the ones growing mixed crops, the ones that supply farmer’s markets. It doesn’t mention environmental protection or land conservation, though some of the country’s most important safeguards are in it. And it doesn’t mention nutrition assistance or hunger, though fully four-fifths of it are food stamps. Why not keep the agricultural parts, even if they benefit only industrial agriculture, in what’s called the farm bill, and call the food-assistance portion what it is? That would get the farm bill back on the rails, and stop letting SNAP debates hijack every vote.
Here’s why not: because that means, as anyone in the anti-hunger community recognizes, pushing the 47 million Americans on food stamps onto an ice floe. The last time Republicans tried to saw off food stamps from the bill, as Jerry Hagstrom recounts in an excellent overview of the most recent farm bill failure, it set back food assistance efforts for more than a decade…
I met Bradley in May at a leadership conference of Share Our Strength, the country’s leading anti-hunger organization certainly as it involves cooks and members of the restaurant community. The official star speaker of the conference was Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, who resoundingly reminded the audience, and the Republicans who weren’t listening, that 92 percent of the 47 million on SNAP are children, the elderly, and the disabled. “If people understood just how vulnerable this population is at a time of economic struggle,” Billy Shore, the founder with his sister Debbie of SOS, told me this morning, “people would understand [that separating off SNAP from the farm bill] makes no sense. This is politics at the expense of kids.”
But the real star was Bradley, who was ostensibly there to speak about her work teaching children how to cook as part of Cooking Matters, a national education program SOS runs. What silenced the crowd was her talking about her educated, proud family needing food stamps, and what that was like for her. It’s quick, and sincere, and un-self-pitying. Watch the short clip and see what you think of Cantor’s victory.
Paul Krugman talks about “Hunger Games, U.S.A.”:
… So what’s going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan’s image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Mr. Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it’s not all about race.
What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called “losers.” If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.
TenguPhule
It is a bad time to be a sane non-evil American. A very bad time.
Phylllis
I continue to wonder why the the grocery store industry is not making more noise about this, since they would also feel the impact. SNAP is a pass-through, the money ultimately accrues to the stores. Even if there is abuse in the system*, someone is getting food, which is the point of the program.
*based on my recollection from my social services days, there were far more instances of retailers breaking the rules than of clients getting a benefit they weren’t eligible for.
Chris
Class prejudice and race prejudice have always gone hand in hand in America. We just don’t talk about it very much because as embarrassed as we are to talk about race, we’re absolutely furious with any suggestion that there might be such a thing as “class.”
Poll taxes were often targeted at poor and working whites as well as nonwhites, the government and its corporate owners have a bloody history of practicing very literal class warfare, and, of course, it used to be that even being white and male wasn’t enough to vote – pre-Andrew Jackson, you had to have a certain amount of money too. In other words, nothing going on here but another old American sin that refuses to die.
(Although Krugman is correct: in my opinion, the simple desire to hurt your neighbor in and of itself is plenty of motivation for the average conservative believer).
David Lloyd-Jones
More than a documentary on hunger in America, I think what we need is some coverage of Republican Congressmen on the Federal tit.
-dlj.
Cermet
As long as these ‘family values’ animals (so-called christians) continue to vote for thugs so the Nig(Clang) are hurt and the poor whites continue to be far too stupid and in their hate of Nig(clang) also vote for these monsters, our country is doomed. I give up on these stupid whites and their hate (both types.) To hell with them – just that their children suffer – just sick that all those thug monsters in congress are allowed to breath.
OzarkHillbilly
I understand it Paul, I understand it quite well. I will explain it to you in 3 words: They are dicks. Or if you prefer the 4 word explanation: “Got mine, fwck you.”
raven
If you are near a tv that gets MSNBC hurry and you can hear MIka freak out that a NYT article says college girls are getting drunk and screwing (and not to minimize it, being assaulted while drunk). Let’s see if she’s as worried about Trayvon.
raven
@raven: It’s been all Trayvon so far.
Baud
The poor are among the least likeliest to vote (quite apart from voter suppression). Is it because they read a lot of Broder and think both sides do it? Or is something else going on?
The first step in obtaining any political power is standing up against the people who hate you. The right understands this to a maniacal degree (see Cleek’s Law), while we still engage in flame wars about whether Democrats are worthy of our support.
gene108
@David Lloyd-Jones:
Documentaries, in the 1960’s, on hunger and poverty are what launched the “War on Poverty” and set up government programs to alleviate hunger*.
The fact these documentaries get no air time on news networks and when they do, they do not shock the public conscious, like they did a couple of generations ago, really goes to some sort of deeper problem that has taken root in America.
There’s just something really, really wrong with the mass consciousness of this country that we no longer get outraged, shocked or care about the inequalities in our country.
EDIT: *From what I’ve heard, when people saw news reports about hunger in America, back in the 1960’s they called their Congressmen and demanded action be taken to end the suffering of their fellow citizens.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
I don’t have TV and that is why. ;-)
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: There ya go. . .
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
They don’t think there is anything they can do to improve their lives as so much of their daily existence reinforces the fact that they can’t. So why bother?
Baud
@gene108:
1) Those documentaries probably focused on white poverty.
2) America was more concerned about its global image then because of communism.
raven
Jonathon Caperhart said this.
Trayvon’s parents
1. Wanted an arrest
2. Wanted a trial by jury
3. Were willing to live with the results of that trial
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
So is there no way to convince them otherwise other than to let them see the effects of Republican governance first hand.
@raven:
As opposed to what?
raven
@Baud: That’s what he said, you can speculate all you want.
eta, His comment was in response to an article Joe wrote about the virulent reaction (you ready for this?) both sides.
Debbie(aussie)
There is absolutely no reason anybody in the world (bar very few exceptions) should go hungry, let alone in western countries, and especially the ‘richest, bestest greatest country on the planet’.(aimed at the bastards not you good folk) F*ck the repugs(rightwingers in general) and their FYIGM attitude.
Debbie(aussie)
@raven:
Re no.3, doesn’t mean we have too.
Kay
@Baud:
They move all the time. Their housing situation is as unstable and precarious as their food situation. More, probably.
They don’t move FAR, here anyway, but each move means they have to update their registration (and ID) and if they cross a county line they have to register in a different location.
It’s true for young people, too.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: I assume Trayvon’s parents are going to file a civil action against Zimmerman as well. Imagine having to fight to have the man who killed your son arrested. Just arrested. There are many on the right (also Zimmerman’s brother and lawyers) who feel Zimmerman shouldn’t even have been arrested!!! I find that shocking, especially Attorney O’Mara’s claim that had Zimmerman been Black, he wouldn’t have been arrested. In which planet would a Black man kill someone and not be arrested?
Baud
@Kay:
That’s a structural barrier to voting that’s fair to point out. I was under the impression that most non-voting is still based on apathy rather than barriers.
JPL
@raven: Both sides might have strong beliefs but there was only one victim and that was Martin. We all know what would have happened if Zimmerman had stayed in his car.
ugh…
Ben Cisco
@raven: Wonder if they still feel the same way about #3…
Kay
@raven:
There’s value in a trial. Even if the burden on self defense was very tough to meet they don’t know what’s going to come out at trial. No one knows.
All they need is one witness to recant or change under oath (either side) and the whole thing could go in a different direction.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t know that apathy is right. I think it’s more “priority”. If you’re constantly worried about the car starting, or making rent, or vital things, if you spend a LOT of time on those, other things fall by the wayside.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
Most of the poor folks I know are too busy just trying to survive to notice why it is so hard to. What little time they have for something else, they spend with what little joys they have. It may sound like apathy, but in reality it is “quiet desperation.” What to do about it?
Shrug… GOTV.
Linda Featheringill
@Baud:
Maybe we could do something about this?
Ben Cisco
@Ben Cisco: Also, a few thoughts…
The only relevant thing that came out of this trial is something many of us already knew – black life is expendable. To be disappointed in the verdict indicates that one expected a just outcome in the first place. That so many people of all walks of life are disappointed, and by extension expected a just outcome, is comforting in that it holds at bay the complete and utter despair that I would otherwise feel. Non-NeoConfederates in general, and people of color in particular, have been under intensified attack since November 4, 2008. The complete and utter hatred that these people have for us has driven them completely mad, to the point where not only will they block any and all laws that would benefit the American people, they will go out of their way to enact laws that would aggressively harm those citizens – including their own supporters. There is apparently no line they will not cross, no conspiracy they won’t embrace, no level of hell they won’t attempt to subject us to – all in the name of their false supremacy.
I fear that they are creating their own self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, If you continually put it to people that you consider them less than “real” Americans, less than decent people, less than human, and deserving of being shot down in the street with absolutely no consequences whatsoever, what do you think the eventual outcome might be?
Baud
@Kay: @OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know then. I hear what you’re saying, but if the people most hurt by Republicans can’t find a way to punish them, it’s going to be a hard fight to sustain, regrettably.
Ugh.
OzarkHillbilly
Found a really good article in the St Louis Post Dispatch this morn. (been a loooonnnggg time since I said that):
How The Aurora Shooter Got
His Ammo
Basically about the reporters efforts to track down the online seller of the ammo used by James Holmes. Long story short, he found them… kind of… after a fashion…. maybe… Nobody is willing to confirm it, face to face. Anyway, a good read and very informative about what is the shadow world of our gun culture.
NotMax
@Baud
Michael Harrington’s book “The Other America” was the crucial and devastating impetus for government programs aimed at aiding the poor and underfed.
Also (and highly related), you can watch the documentary on the plight of migrant workers probably most noted at the time, “Harvest of Shame,” here. Per Edward R. Murrow: “One farmer looked at this and said, ‘We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.’ “
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
It’s ridiculous. During the trial, their whole complaint was the case was circumstantial, there wasn’t enough physical evidence to put poor Zimmerman thru this. But 90% of the defense case was circumstantial, too. Most of it was statements BY George Zimmerman. He’s self interested.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
It has always been a hard fight to sustain. And yeah, ugh. But it helps to remember that it is a fight that has been going on since the birth of this country. Consider how far we have come, not just how far we have yet to go.
In the beginning, only white men of property could vote.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, I would say that’s why you build and maintain a coalition. It’s the only way Democrats win. They have to put pieces together. You know, you can look at it as a curse, herding cats, or you can look at it as “diverse” :)
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Hopefully, if there is a civil trial, Zimmerman will have to take the stand and address the contradictions in his stories.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: @Kay:
No disagreement here. I’m more of an optimist than a pessimist most of the time. I’m probably more frustrated with what seems to be the too often piss-poor messaging that non-voters (and voters) receive than with the non-voting itself.
I hate losing, but I hate losing by own-goals even more.
@NotMax:
Thanks.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
You mean “Both sides do it” or “Dems are just as bad as Repubs”? Yeah, I know you do. It pisses me off too.
aimai
@raven: What was their option on number 3? I don’t understand this point. They are the victims of this senseless crime. They don’t have any control over whether they have to “live” with the results of the trial, anymore than they get a choice over losing their child.
Joseph Nobles
@Patricia Kayden: Michael Steele, former RNC chair, responded to that assertion of O’Mara on Twitter: “Is he high?”
OzarkHillbilly
To brighten the morning:
Spain’s endangered Iberian lynx brought back from brink of extinction
A long way to go yet, but still…
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t like setting “the poor” off by themselves, rhetorically, but there’s a tactical disagreement about that among liberals and Democrats.
The more popular argument says one should proudly state “we must help The Poor!” I think that just reinforces that they are The Other. I think it’s smarter politically to put the middle class in front of them, include them in a larger group. They’re less vulnerable that way.
No one describes themselves as “poor”.
OzarkHillbilly
@aimai:
Taking justice into their own hands, or to put it another way, engage in that long standing Southern tradition: Lynching.
NotMax
Open Thread, so…
Fiberoptic transmission is so last century – graphene shows unusual promise as the next big thing.
IowaOldLady
@Kay: Yeah, that’s why I oppose means testing Social Security. As soon as it becomes a program for “the poor,” it’s far easier to destroy. Compare how Medicaid is treated vs Medicare.
currants
@Baud: Another structural barrier is time/scheduling, and to a lesser degree, transportation: working multiple part-time jobs may mean you can’t get to the polls when they are open. (Each separate boss saying ‘well, you can go before/after your shift,’ for example). Absentee ballots don’t work in this situation for the same reasons: you are not going to be out of town, but you may not know until the week before what your schedule is, and (at least in MA) you have to apply for the ballot in advance of that.
currants
@Kay: YES.
JPL
@IowaOldLady: You are absolutely correct. It might take years or even decades but their message resonates with some. Why should Warren Buffet receive Social Security? Are the democrats trying to subsidize the wealthy? Social Security is an insurance program not an entitlement but that fact is seldom mentioned.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
I prefer librarian cougars, but to each their own. Rrrrowr.
jprfrog
Rep Fincher wants some Bible? Let’s give him some Bible: ” The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” Isaiah 3:15, New Oxford Bible. Then there is that crypto-Marxist Jesus going on about rich men and camels.
Seriously. this sort of thing is very common, especially in a society with a strong strain of Calvinism in its heritage. One facet of that belief system is that God, at his whim, chooses who shall be saved and who shall be damned, and that is predestined, independent of action. A corollary is that the “elect” shall be blessed with prosperity and the damned be cursed with privation. Thus, the poor are beyond saving, and wealth is a sign of God’s favor. P
personally, I find this to be a very sick way of regarding the world, but atheist that I am, what do I know? Clearly, not as much as Rep. FIncher, because he is rich and I am not. (But I am not poor either….go figure).
Suffern ACE
@Joseph Nobles: it is a strange right wing belief that, despite demographics of our prison system, blacks get away with everything. Also, remember that blacks are the real racists here. If Zimmerman were black, this one of countless black on black murders that go un solved because Al Sharpton is only interested in persecuting whites.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chyron HR: Heh.
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
I don’t really get the civil trial angle. Zimmerman has no assets. I guess they can attach a portion of earnings for the rest of his life, but for me, if it were my kid, I wouldn’t want to be tied to him like that for years.
But of course it’s his parents decision.
'Niques
I think that, post CRS, racism has been a boil just under the surface of this country … ignored, and supposedly taken care of, all the while festering. With the election (and OMG, RE-election) of an African American, that boil has burst. We are now dealing with the diseased pus it released. It is smelly and disgusting, but a necessary step toward healing.
OzarkHillbilly
@‘Niques:
Now if only we can get the smelly, disgusting and diseased pus ridden pustules to take those steps….
aimai
@Kay: I get the civil trial aspect because Zimmerman will go on to profit from the murder and it would be the only way to prevent him from enjoying the sales of his future book or his perks/salary from Fox news. Even if the money actually recouped is nothing, that is still something. I hope they receive good advice, legal and emotional, about what such a civil suit would entail in terms of the re-smirching of Trayvon’s good name and the repeated blows to their emotions of hearing the murder discussed over and over again in trial and deposition.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
There are many forms to it but that’s basically correct.
Anya
@Kay: @Baud: Sometimes they simply cannot vote, again due to structural barriers. I met a woman in Cleveland who was on the verge of tears when she told me she would love to vote but she can’t. She works at two jobs, had to pick up her daughter from school, and drop her off at her mother’s place before she goes to her third job. When can she find time to vote?
She told me that she would love to vote because she would personally affected by the repeal of ACA but she cannot find a time to vote. The campaign arranged a ride for her and her mother to vote. It took 4-volunteers to accomplish this (two of us stayed in line for her, one drove her to work and another drove her mother and daughter). Do you think campaigns always have the means or the organization to accomplish this?
Tim O'Connor
I was a “Free Lunch” kid but now I’m a business owner employing 25 people. My parents made mistakes, but asked for the assistance so their children wouldn’t have to suffer while they got back on their feet. My four brothers and sisters and I are now productive citizens and truly appreciate the hand up we were given and know the value it is to others. We are a nurse, an art teacher, a pilot, a business manager and a business owner. Thank you America.
jprfrog
One benefit of a wrongful death suit would be making GZ testify and let a cross-examiner pick apart his lies. We might then at least have a better idea of what actually happened.
ruviana
To get a sense of the mean-spiritedness that Krugman alludes to read some of the comments on the Atlantic piece. Obviously some were trolling, but others just couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around how hard it can be to deal with poverty, how multi-leveled and intertwined it is. And of course there were a number of nasty comments about how “fat” the woman in the picture accompanying the article was. Drove me nuts! It suggests just how hard it is to break through what is probably denial. And about the War on Poverty allusion some made, remember that when “Harvest of Shame” came out there were three major networks and no cable, so way more people would have seen the show than now–imagine people running for their remotes to change the channel to “There Goes Honey BooBoo” or similar.
liberal
@ruviana:
Frankly, these people are just fscking dumb.
I’m relatively well off, probably in top 2 or 3% by income, yet I have enough of an imagination to think “OK, my live is pretty stressful sometimes, but it would be a massive world of suck if in addition I had to live paycheck to paycheck.”
Ditto the white idiots who fail to have a remote understanding of what it’s like to be black. I’ll agree that in that case, it’s probably very difficult for a white person to imagine the full depth of the bullshit that black people have to put up with, but these morons can’t even make a go at it.
lol
@Kay:
and of course, the worst voter ID laws require that not only you have ID but it also has to have your current address on it.
Trakker
I’ve lived in a DC suburb for most of my adult life, When we bought a weekend cabin in rural West Virginia 13 years ago I began to get a glimpse of the resentment those residents have for government “handouts”.
There are probably no more generous people in America than the 7,000 residents of Tucker County. It is a poor county, but the residents take care of their own and give generously to the local charities that help those who need help. Since they pretty much know each other, they see the good their donations make and who it helps.
These generous people resent having to also pay taxes to help the poor in the big cities, people they don’t know and who, as they hear from Fox News daily, are lazy parasites who live well on the backs of the hardworking white Americans in Tucker County and elsewhere.
I understand their resentment. I also understand that their sole news source, Fox News, is poisoning their minds. What they don’t understand is that in the cities we don’t know our neighbors. In a half mile radius from my house there are as many people as in Tucker County. I know maybe 20 of my neighbors, and people move in and out at a steady rate. That’s life in the big cities. We don’t know the poor in our neighborhoods so our knowledge of local poverty is not good. Thus we tend not to be as generous giving to local charities. We rely on our governments (local, state and federal) to means-test and provide help to those who need it, There is almost no resentment in the cities that our tax money to help the needy also goes to the poor in rural states like West Virginia.
The people in Tucker County do get federal help, lots of it, but they don’t make the connection that much of this money comes from the wealthier taxpayers in the very regions they resent. Fox News never points this fact out, and Fox News is the only source of news people in rural counties like Tucker County get. The local cable provider refuses to provide MSNBC despite my repeated requests.
liberal
@aimai:
My impression is that it will be very difficult to even sue to begin with, let alone win a trial.
Of course, here I’m speaking of “is” not “ought”.
gene108
@Baud:
@NotMax:
What’s lacking in America today is the ability to be “shocked” into a collective belief we are all Americans and we need to set aside our differences.
The Great Depression was such a “shock” that got a couple of generations of Americans to believe government had a responsibility to help the less fortunate. That is why the reports Not Max linked to had such a big impact on government policy. People started calling their Congressmen, with the belief government had a responsiblity to affect positive change.
Watergate / Vietnam was another “shock” that went through all Americans. The end result was a large part of Americans became very cynical towards their government and Reagan played on that to declare “government is the problem”.
9/11/01 was another “shock”, but Bush & Co. used it to polarize Americans into a “with us or against us” mindset, so instead of Americans finding common cause to act together* our politics and political views became more polarized, which has only gained steam through today.
There really was a deep cultural view that America was supposed to be about helping the less fortunate, with the Great Depression generation, while that changed with the Watergate-Vietnam generation and turned into the crazy ass shit we have today, because instead of pulling everyone together, Bush & Co. decided to polarize America after 9/11/01.
*On 9/11/01, I was having some car trouble. I went to work, in the morning and checked if someone could get me with the dealership. I passed someone on the way to my car, who said a plane had hit the WTC. I thought it was a small private plane. Went to the dealership and dropped my car off. They said it was a commercial plane. When I went back in the afternoon to get my car, the dealership didn’t charge me for looking at it. Something bigger had happened that made the $80 they normally charge irrelevant. Bush & Co. squandered that sort of brotherhood and the poison is still with us today.
Anya
I just don’t get how the cold blooded killing of a 17-year old kid turned into an ideological battle. Why are douchebag Donald Trump and other asshole wingnuts and opportunists cheering or justifying the killing of a 17-year old boy? WTF is wrong with these people? Is this another stick it to Obama move?
raven
@Anya: It didn’t “turn into” anything, that’s what it was from the beginning.
aimai
@Trakker: I think its weird that you buy into the “Rural people give more to charities” thing. The study that shows that actually shows merely that Religious/Conservative people give a lot of money to their own schools and churches under the guise of “charitable donations.” I certainly give money in taxes to pay for the welfare state, and I don’t consider that “charity” at all–I consider that mutual social insurance. My giving is definitionally race blind–its also religious and regionally blind since I have no control over how my money is spent. Thats in the highest tradition of Jewish charitable giving, btw, when neither the recipient nor the giver knows who gave or got what.
Black people in the cities, and urban regions generally, give a shitload of money that gets spent in WV and any claim to the contrary is just bullshit.
PeakVT
Let us all pause to marvel at the efficiency of private corporations.
Maude
The House Republicans have brought back Ronnie Reagan.
Cruelty is now SOP for them.
Dems need to run in 2014 on how awful the Republicans have been and indeed damaging the county.
Gov. Christie, NJ, is of this type of Republican. He has harmed the poor in NJ greatly.
We are due for a sea change.
gene108
@Maude:
But he hasn’t harmed he middle class and looks to coast to re-election.
Advocating for the poor is a very difficult way to spend political capital, because it rarely connects with the realities of middle and upper class voters.
Kay
@lol:
It does. They’re suing preemptively in Ohio right now to keep the ID rules the same, because we have some provisions that protect people who can’t change their ID address every 6 months; utility bill as ID, read “government document” broadly, etc. They’re able to bring it because there was a consent decree in 2010 and it’s due to expire. It’s smart. We need to do more positioning like that. Get ahead of it.
Trakker
@aimai: I actually know for a fact that the people of Tucker County give a lot because the figures are proudly reported in the local newspaper. These are secular charities, not church run, but if you add the money given to churches to help the poor it would be even more impressive. Maybe Tucker County is unique in this respect, I don’t know. I’m just curious why you assume I’m stupid.
liberal
@aimai:
I haven’t looked at the details, but I recall this issue from the “religous people give more” argument, and the obvious counterargument that giving to one’s own church is hardly charity in the best sense of the word.
liberal
@gene108:
Yes. The ultimate reason is that the poor have very little, if not no, political influence.
Svensker
@Anya:
Yes. My brother posted a picture of TM smoking next to a pic of young Obama smoking with the “he looks like my son” line below. Pretty funny, huh? Har har har two black thugs!
Maude
@gene108:
Property taxes went up. The state is starting to tank financially.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Kay:
You nailed it. In my life I spent some time living-in-my-car poor. My atavism during that trying time made getting food and stealing enough gas to move the vehicle at the mandated intervals my entire focus. Atavism, I found to my complete surprise, was the result of being dead broke and down on my luck in America.
Flashback:
Register to vote? Oh sure. I’m at this point certain that your politicians’ promises absolutely outweigh the fact that my last meal was two fistfuls of uncooked rice and that today is trash day.
Being poor changed my mental landscape. The odds of being ennobled or motivated by poverty are about the same as the odds of becoming the next great guitarist. My take is that if you want the poor and the marginalized to on your side then you better dig deep and find ways to make sure that they have three hots and a flop. Otherwise, you’re pissing in the wind.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@liberal: “That 5000 seat church is not charity.”
rikyrah
Kay,
sometimes you just have to stand up for the poor. Sometimes you can’t mask it with ‘ middle class’.
Dammit, people should not go hungry in this country, and folks need to be able to stand up for that and call those out that would make them starve.
fuck those evil sociopaths.
MomSense
@Patricia Kayden:
In what planet would a black man shoot someone and not be DNA tested, drug tested, and arrested?!
gene108
@Maude:
Christie’s riding the bounce from Sandy and the improving economy, versus where it was in 2009.
There’s a lot of bad things he’s done and things that just don’t register.
When he rolled back the millionaires tax and off-set the reduced revenue by slashing $800 million from education, a lot of folks in places with good schools and high property taxes were upset their little one’s education was going to get hurt. But four years later and the little ones are getting into good colleges that fear has been blunted.
There’s a lot that’s bad with Christie’s record, but for whatever reason nothing really sticks to him.
And I think the Democrats in New Jersey are pretty disappointing, as they have largely been bought off by Christie, so their local machines and themselves personally can get enriched, which is one reason no one is pointing out his negatives; there really isn’t much of a political opposition to him, as he bought them off.
ruviana
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: This. Absolutely this. Poverty is hard.
smith
@Svensker:
Someone on my Facebook timeline posted pics of Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman next to each other with the caption: “Killing Kids Since 2008”
If anyone ever sent me what your brother did I would defriend them in an instant, although it is hard to defriend your brother.
Chris
@Maude:
That, more than anything else, is why the base will love him, maybe even enough to overlook his hurricane performance.
Chris
@liberal:
Yep.
The question “how much of that money actually goes to help the less fortunate? How much gets spent on homophobic, Islamophobic and otherwise political campaigns? How much of it disappears into the pastor’s new Cadillac and mansion?” is, of course, politically incorrect to ask.
LongHairedWeirdo
The meanspiritedness actually can work. See, there’s the well off who think they’re being abused by the system. They like mean. And then there’s the people who’ve been struggling hard, but don’t need food stamps (or don’t quite qualify, need ’em or not), who think “I can handle it, why can’t those awful others?”
As long as the huge majority of people don’t need food stamps, there’ll be people who are in denial about how many really need them, and those who are resentful because they’re not getting any help, and those who are selfish and don’t want to pay the extra pennies in taxes needed to fund them.
lol
@liberal:
The amount of money that the Catholic Church receives that actually goes to charitable work is somewhere in the neighborhood of less than 10%. I can’t imagine the evangelical denominations are any better since they seem much more inclined to be grifting.
Edit: I say “seems” because the Catholic Church obviously isn’t inclined to release its budget.
smith
@LongHairedWeirdo:
If you show any empathy for any person who is struggling, you are seen as “soft” or “weak.” We’ve lost that in this country. People associate poverty with being a loser and no one wants to “associate” with a loser. There is a quote (don’t remember who originated it) about the majority of people in this country think they’re in the upper 1% and that they will never, ever have to face poverty in their lifetimes.
Meanwhile, they live paycheck to paycheck, have run up their credit cards, and are struggling just as much as the next person but they don’t want to admit it.
kc
It’s probably wrong of me to wish severe financial hardship on Rick Santelli. But I do.
marian
@Kay: Interestingly, a little quick research suggests that the BOP is on the prosecution to disprove self defense beyond a reasonable doubt in almost every state in the country (including Florida) except…wait for it…Ohio.
Given that, without any other eyewitness than the defendant, I don’t see how the prosecution ever meets its burden. It’s a license to kill and not only in Fl
Cacti
@marian:
If George Zimmerman was a 29-year old black man, and Trayvon Martin a 17-year old white kid, there’s not a chance in hell that jury lets him walk.
Everything about the case would have been handled differently by law enforcement, starting with the Sanford PD arriving on the scene. A black man standing over a white corpse would be lucky not to be shot on sight. And if he avoided that, he would have been face down on the concrete with a knee on his head, and cuffs on his wrists. He also would have been booked that night, tested for alcohol or drugs, and his clothing would have been seized and entered into evidence.
marian
@Cacti: @Cacti: I totally agree with the second part of what you say. I’m just making the point that it’s damn difficult for the prosecution to meet the burden of proof without an eyewitness in any case. That’s why traditionally the defendant had the burden of proof to establish an affirmative defense.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Truth. I was poor once, when I was young. I would not survive the experience now that I’m middle-aged.
You want the poor politically engaged? Christ, so do I. But you’re going to have to feed them, their families, and give them some breathing room from dealing with the relentless hell of their lives – they’re just not going to be able to pull it off otherwise.
Tripod
For the same reason that Imam in Nigeria want to shoot up the public schools. They want to empower non-state actors.
MomSense
@Svensker:
Because smoking is a capital offense punishable by immediate execution. I am seeing things like this too and it just infuriates me.
Roy G.
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: This. Atavism is a Republican virtue.
evodevo
@Kay: Yes. This. One of my co-workers (white, working poor) – who, when I said something about voting (a few years ago) came out with that old copout “I vote for the person, not the party” – has not been registered to vote in over 10 years, at least. She has moved 3 times, been divorced and re-married and has NEVER updated (if she was even originally enrolled, which I doubt!) her voter registration. It’s a VERY common meme among the economically marginalized here in Ky. Oh, and a Fox viewer, fundie and anti-abortion, too.
Yet this same person has taken full advantage of food stamps and Medicaid, and her parents/relatives/dependents are on Medicaid, SS disability, student loans, etc. etc.
I have broached this several times, saying unless you pay attention, these programs will disappear. In one ear and out the other.
And they wonder what’s the matter with Kansas.
Ruckus
@gene108:
A lot of valid points here today but this one is a biggie.
This is no longer the country of my parents generation, the depression. Where everyone(OK almost everyone) suffered. I say almost because one of my grandfathers told me he worked every day of the depression and when my other grandfather died at the height of the depression, all 5 of his kids went out and got jobs to support their mom. My understanding was that it took them all less than a month to find work. But they all knew people badly affected by the depression and mom raised chickens and had a huge garden in the back yard to feed themselves.
Even with the largest/longest recession ever, while many suffered, many did not. They don’t see poverty, joblessness, starvation. It just doesn’t affect their world.
mclaren
If you people still haven’t realized that America is a nation of sadistic cowardly bully-worshipers who adore watching other people suffer and despise joy, you’re going to get an education.
This sick twisted torture-loving please-hating country is on course to outdo the Aztec Empire for sheer cruelty and barbarism.